AllMusic 20: Sean's Faves

By Sean Westergaard · Jun. 22, 2012

Going through literally thousands of albums over a 20-year span to choose a mere 20 albums is a difficult task. This was daunting enough, so I set up some guidelines. My choices had to be new albums at the time; no reissues or 'lost' albums seeing release for the first time. (It was really difficult to remove the Residents' Cube E Box set from the list, so I'm cheating and mentioning it in the text.) So, for perhaps the first time, there are no Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, or Sun Ra albums on one of my lists. Also, they had to be albums that knocked me out on first listen and are still being played frequently either at home or on my radio show, not just something I liked when I first listened to it. There are bound to be glaring oversights. If time allowed, I could probably do this again and come up with a completely different list. Then there are the albums that weren't on the lists that I looked through that have already escaped my mind and are therefore not in contention. So here are my choices, in no order whatsoever.